Writing manuals and what's in them

Lately, I've been thinking about the theory of writing. And doing some research. Most stuff in so-called writing manuals is the same - write what you know, separate a time for writing, read more than you write, kill the adverb, know the rules before you break them - but some people have interesting insights.

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The book that started off this train of thought for me was Feliks W. Kres's Broken Quills Gallery, a collection of his beginner-writers feature in two different magazines. A lot of his advice applies to writing in Polish only, but some is universal and surprising:

- The way people see things, they notice light first. Then movement. Then colour and shape. That's the order in which you should describe things.

- Use sentence lengths to set the rhythm of your scenes. All short and all long will be monotonous, but use 3 short - 1 long for an action scene, 3 long - 1 short for descriptions, or any mix that seems right.

- And most of all: anyone can have an idea and a plot. It's the artisan's work, not the artist's, that takes skill and practice and time. 1% genius, 99% sweat.

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I also got Stephen King's On Writing. Apart from being fascinating as a biography and an insight into his other books (and notice the narrative tricks he uses in the biographical part - maybe even more useful than the actual manual), it's a compendium of useful, basic rules that I recommend for anyone. Also, his muse is a New England cigar-smoking snob who wins bowling tournaments. I feel a bit better about my foul-mouthed psychobeauty now.

- Unless it's really inappropriate, use the first word that comes to mind while writing the first draft. When you reach for the mental thesaurus, therein lies the path to pretentiousness.

- At the core, each sentence is subject-verb. Rocks explode. Jane transmits. Mountains float. Plums deify. If you're stuck, write the next sentence like that. It'll tell you how to flesh it out.

- If you have a paragraph of description, make the first sentence the theme. The rest of the paragraph elaborates on this first sentence. The forest was dark. Branches rustled somewhere above as something - a squirrel? - jumped from one tree to another. The lack of light turned the green moss grey. (Note: my example, not King's, because his is too long.)

- Once you've written something, re-read it. Apart from normal editing (King says he trims 10% off a work in second draft), look closely: is there symbolism? Is there a theme? If so, good. Emphasize it elegantly. It helps the reader focus on the story and the message, makes them see the lower layers.

- And finally: if you find yourself with too many troublesome characters, blow them up. As many times as necessary >:D

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So much for Messrs Kres and King. Anyone have any insightful writing manuals they care to recommend to me?

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I have no idea what to call this, but it was 30C today, and the weekend's going to be worse, so I have no hope of kicking my brain into operating better than it does now. Roughly 300 words, pre-slash if you blink.

For kerithwyn: I always wanted to see something about Coll's unrequited affection for Diar, an' it suits you, or pretty much anything else you'd care to write from those books. :)


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( On the night of changes )